Description
This album covers Edward Gennys Fanshawe's Baltic service in command of HMS 'Cossack' during the Crimean War, August 1854 - August 1855, and his brief transfer to the 'Hastings' in the Baltic and latterly at Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, 1855-56, though on her return to England in late 1855 he was invalided ashore until rejoining the ship at Queenstown in January 1856. It also covers his command of the 'Centurion' in the Mediterranean from May 1856 to June 1858, when he was again invalided home. Also included are holiday drawings made in Scotland in 1843 and 1883, Switzerland in 1877 and 1880, and a single drawing of Moulmein, Burma, made in 1846 during his Eastern posting as Commander in the 'Cruizer', 1844-46.
No. 24 in Fanshawe's Baltic and later album, 1843 - 83. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The eleventh of a series of drawings of the Mediterranean fleet's summer cruise, from Malta and back, between 3 June and 7 November 1857. This fine atmospheric watercolour shows the citadel of Corfu at the south end of the island of that name, from the west side and probably in the light of late afternoon and rather changeable weather. In the background rise the mountains of the western mainland of Greece. Writing to has father on the 10th, Fanshawe had reported rain and southerly winds as detaining their further progress to Cepahlonia and Crete (Fanshawe [1904], p. 354). Corfu is the principal island of the Ionian archipelago, which the British effectively controlled from 1809, when the group was largely taken from French occupation. From 1815 they were a British protectorate, governed from Corfu, and retained for naval reasons against growing Greek disapproval after independence from Turkey in 1830, until handed back to Greece in 1864. The large building among trees in the centre may be the British governor's country house from which (or more likely its grounds) Lieutenant George Mends also did a drawing of the citadel in October 1852. Two Greek men, one with a musket and so probably out hunting with their dog, add local colour on the left.
Image Licence
CC BY-NC-ND
Image Credit
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Location
Corfu Town, Corfu, Greece
Country
Greece
Medium
Watercolour
Tags
Category
Landscapes & Seascapes
